by Hazel Parker
“Thanks,” he said, beaming. “I try to take good care of it. I’d like to think that it’s something that I can ride with pride.”
“I would say so,” I said, running my hand over its warm exterior. “I haven’t ever ridden a motorcycle before. Is it going to be safe?”
“Of course!” Jack said as if I’d asked him the most amusing question ever. “I wouldn’t take you on a boring first date, but I also wouldn’t take you on a first date where you could die! That would be a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Well, in comparison to some of my other first dates, it might not be the worst thing,” I said with a laugh.
Thankfully, Jack didn’t ask me to elaborate any further on what I meant. I wouldn’t have minded telling him about Kyle, but I didn’t think first dates were the spot to discuss previous relationships. Maybe on, say, the fifth date or so.
“Well, you got nothing to worry about. No one’s dying today on my watch. I’ll make sure to go at a controlled, safe pace. Think of it as an opportunity for you to do some research for your next book!”
“That’s my excuse for everything,” I said with a snort. “Although, people do like reading about chicks on motorcycles in some urban fantasy novels. So, you know what? Why the hell not. Let’s do it.”
“Now you’re talking,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders.
He then lifted the seat, revealing a helmet that fit pretty snugly over my head. I felt like I was in a roller coaster, with the attendants making sure that the restraints were properly pushed up against me. Those same nerves were starting to set in, the feeling that I was about to get on something that I would not be able to get off until the conclusion of the ride.
But you know what? I had never suddenly gotten off of a roller coaster just before it started, and I didn’t see any reason to start that now.
He got on the bike and beckoned for me to sit behind me.
“Just wrap your arms around me and hold tight,” he said. “Don’t worry; you can’t choke me.”
It’s a good thing I kept my mouth shut, because I might have said something a little inappropriate there without the proper self-censoring.
“The only thing to remember is that when I lean, follow my lead. You’ll feel the bike. But don’t jerk too hard. Just very gradually move your body in that direction. I don’t think it’ll be anything too hard. Got it?”
“Yeah!” I said.
I pushed my legs up onto his and wrapped my arms around his body. I had hugged him before, but I hadn’t laid my hands on his stomach. I was surprised to realize that though he was bulky, he had a pretty firm stomach. He was not big because he was fat, or if he was, he had plenty of muscle underneath.
But admiring his firm figure vanished as soon as the bike roared to life. The roller coaster had officially lurched out of the entrance and had begun its initial ascent. I could have gotten off, but there was no real way to at this point; now, it was just a few moments of peaceful calm before it roared.
“Where are we going, by the way?” I shouted.
He leaned back and smiled.
“Where I assume all authors like to hang out.”
A coffee shop? A book store? A—
The bike lurched forward. I let out a scream and pressed my head in between Jack’s shoulder blades. The missile of a vehicle vibrated between my legs, and I felt myself squeezing the bike as hard as I could as if somehow gluing myself to the thing would prevent me from getting hurt.
Slowly, though, I relaxed my muscles. I still kept a tight grip, but I managed to ease up on the tension.
And my goodness, in doing so, I opened up a joyful experience unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I was so glad that Jack had put it as me getting an education for my novels because he was a hundred percent right. I needed to incorporate a good motorcycle ride into Fires of the City. Maybe after the final fight or something—but it had to be somewhere!
The ride was a lot more stop-and-go than I think Jack would have preferred because I heard him muttering about the traffic frequently. To my surprise, though, instead of going east to more open area, we were instead headed straight for Manhattan, perhaps the worst place in the world to be a driver of a private vehicle.
For the most part, we stayed on the easternmost roads, my view obstructed by the many high-rises. But I could still get a few close-up glimpses of One World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, and many others. We finally turned left around 42nd Street, making me wonder if we’d somehow missed the street for Times Square and were backtracking.
But instead, Jack somehow, miraculously, found a spot to park on the street just a little bit down the road from Grand Central Terminal.
“Sweet,” I said, feeling relieved to have made it through but also a little sad that it had ended. “That was amazing!”
“Good news for you: as long as you don’t hate my guts by the end of the date, there’ll be an opportunity for a ride back.”
I laughed, remembering the date from the night before. It would take an almost schizophrenic switch in personality for me to suddenly abandon Jack. As long as he acted as he normally did, I didn’t see anything that would make me want to leave him and the chance to get on that bike.
“So far, I don’t hate you at all.”
“Give it time,” he said with a wink before offering his hand. It was warm to the touch and still trembled ever so slightly from the bike, but once his fingers curled around mine, the trembling disappeared. It was like as long as he had me, he felt secure.
Soon, though, my mind shifted to trying to figure out just what we were going to do. I still hadn’t the foggiest idea, and though Manhattan certainly offered more than its fair share of activities to do, I was left groping in the dark for what we were going to do. I almost began to think that Grand Central Station was somehow supposed to represent an expansion of the mind needed for the author, and that was why he was going to take me there.
But instead, we kept walking right past it, his hand guiding me through the throng of people entering and exiting their respective trains.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“It’s just a few more blocks away,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you walk across Manhattan.”
“I would hope not!” I said with a laugh. “Us writers aren’t usually the greatest at staying in shape!”
“Look at me; do I look like someone who keeps himself up?” he said, chuckling as he then walked me across the street. “I’m more likely to eat an entire pizza and not think about it than I am to go for a run.”
“Oh, don’t say that! You look like you’ve lifted a lot of weights in your life.”
“That is true. I do a lot of bulking. But not a lot of cutting!”
He laughed that beautiful, bursting laugh that seemed to echo across all of Manhattan. Every time I heard that laugh, I felt like I was a little closer to his soul; his laugh was the most genuine part of him, and nothing else even came close. Nothing could send tingles down my spine quite like that laugh of his.
Then, before I could think, he was pulling me away from the road.
“Look up.”
I did. My eyes went wide.
“The library?” I said in surprise. “You know me so well.”
“I hope it’s not cliché.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said, it becoming my turn to laugh. “Come on!”
Now it was my turn to take the lead, and I dragged him into the library. We walked slowly, admiring the Roman-like architecture on the outside with the columns, and then gasping when we got inside at the art up high and the seemingly endless rows of stacks. Though we had to become quiet so that we would not get kicked out or disrupt those who were there to work, inside, I was screaming for joy and practically dancing with excitement.
“Libraries are like my personal Mecca,” I said when we reached some stacks that weren’t quite as crowded. “It’s like you have all the knowledge in t
he world without the clickbait and silly nonsense that the internet creates.”
“So it’s like a curated Google,” he said.
“Yeah, but I feel like that doesn’t do it justice,” I said, suddenly getting on a roll. “Every book that you see in here took a long, long time to produce. Some only needed a few rounds of edits, some needed endless editing, but they all took time. You put something on Google, it can be ready for consumption in a matter of moments. There’s no filter on it. But here? Everything is curated. Everything is selected. Time has ensured that everything in here is valuable.”
I knew I was romanticizing it a bit. I’m sure there were books in the library that were terrible, uninformative, or even propaganda. I knew that there were some books that could generously be called “art.”
But I also knew that for at least ninety percent of the books in this building, I was not wrong. I wasn’t a good enough author to have added anything I created to the stacks inside, but I still held out hope that at some point in my lifetime, I would make that happen. At some point, I would have a book good enough to make it into the New York Public Library.
That, much more than a five-star review on Amazon or anything of a similar ilk, would have made me proud and satiated. That would have been the crowning of a wonderful career.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s look.”
We spent what felt like the next hour just going through the stacks, trading jokes about book titles, sharing interesting tidbits about different sections, and describing our favorite books. I knew that Jack felt a little bit out of his element; I could tell that he wasn’t nearly the same voracious reader that I was. But even still, I couldn’t stop admiring how much he had put himself out there by taking an interest in what I liked.
That, far more than him knowing anything in the stacks, made him so much more attractive. At this point, it was getting pretty hard to think of anything that I didn’t like about Jack.
Except for one thing.
He wasn’t wearing the sleeveless jacket today with the Savage Saints lettering on the back, but the connection that Kyle had unwittingly made for me yesterday was the kind of thing that I couldn’t let escape. Honestly, I didn’t think it would bother me that much, but it was something that I just had to know.
As we finally exited the building, the sun having begun its descent below the horizon in the time it took for us to explore the library, I decided that there was no better time to ask my question.
“So, Jack,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Something I was curious about. I noticed before that you had on a jacket with the words ‘Savage Saints’ on them. What’s that all about?”
Chapter 9: Biggie
Well, it was bound to come up sooner or later.
Everything about that first hour or so of the date had gone absolutely perfectly. No, I wasn’t the type of reader that Lilly was, and yes, I felt a little bit out of my league with her. But seeing her smile like a kid, seeing her look at me with those beautiful eyes, seeing her laugh whenever I cracked a joke, no matter how stupid, put me at ease.
Alas, no relationship could ever be one hundred percent good times. If it was, it was because it was a short-lived relationship and most certainly not a serious one. And both of those were things that I did not want to describe my potential time with Lilly. I wanted us to last a long time, maybe even forever—at least in theory. And, hey, I was the optimistic one; of course, I was going to believe that things were going to last happily ever after.
“The Savage Saints,” I said. “Where to start?”
I definitely wasn’t going to mention any of the negative things that happened. I decided not to mention the fights I was having with Uncle. I decided not to mention the ongoing, bitter feud that we had with Kyle. In fact, I didn’t even want to mention Kyle; Kyle was a conversation for a different time and place. It would come, sure, but I needed this conversation to reflect the good things of the Savage Saints, not the negatives.
“The Savage Saints are like family to me,” I said. “I’ve been a mechanic basically since right out of high school, and the Savage Saints is sort of our way of turning what would have been a normal job into a full-blown brotherhood. My brother is in it. My uncle is in it. One of my closest work friends is in it. And several other people are in it. It can be a little stereotypical masculine and a little over the top sometimes—we certainly like to party like crazy—but at its core, it’s something that makes me happy.”
“That’s great!” she said. She sounded like she just wanted a reason to believe me, that perhaps she had heard some things about us before. It wasn’t hard to find negative articles questioning us; the press hated us and liked to make us look like outlaws. But for most people who weren’t Kyle or from a rival gang, we were just a bunch of well-meaning, gruff men who liked alcohol and motorcycles a little too much.
In other words, we may have been obnoxious from afar, but up close, we were good.
“I just wanted to make sure, you know. Sometimes people say things.”
It sounded like Lilly had heard “things” that were far more negative than she was letting on, but until she elaborated on those things, I was plenty happy to stay positive and not dive into the darker side of the club.
Unfortunately, I suspected the next couple of weeks would give me far too many chances to see the dark side of the club and our rivals.
“Well, you’re the smart one for wanting to learn more about us,” I said. “So many people just make snap judgments and don’t bother to learn anything about us, but it’s the ones who get to really know us who understand that we’re not bad guys.”
Hopefully, that’s true even when they know everything. Because heaven knows, especially depending on how the next few days go…
“But, hey, I suppose you’re not ready for this date to end, right?”
“Oh, goodness, no!” she said. “But I am hungry. Did you have something in mind for food?”
I bit my lip.
“Confession. No. However—”
“Let’s go to Chopt!”
“I’m sorry?”
But Lilly was already pulling me toward a salad store. A salad store! I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten at a salad store, and now I was going to have to do so on my first date?
This was easily going to be the hardest part of the night, and it wasn’t even close.
“We could just do Chipotle right down the street, you know, it’s—”
“There’s no way Chipotle is nearly as healthy as this place,” she said. “We can’t be having all that greasy meat! Get some veggies in you! You’ll feel better!”
God help me.
I wasn’t about to fight it. With some reluctance—and fully aware that I was never going to mention where I went to dinner to the rest of the Savage Saints, ever—I walked into the shop. There were some meat options, but it was no steakhouse or BBQ joint. Lilly ordered some vegan salad, and I just asked for whatever had the most meat in it. I ended up eating some bowl with chicken shawarma, which, I had to admit…
It was tasty.
But I was never going to admit that out loud to anyone aside from Lilly, and even to her, I could only say, “It was decent.”
“Oh, you really are such a cliché dude sometimes,” she said, playfully hitting my arm. “But it’s OK. I appreciate you eating here anyways.”
“Just don’t ever make me go vegan or vegetarian or I’m going to lose my damn mind,” I said with a chuckle. “I love my meat too much ever to give it up.”
“And I would never force you or anyone to eat a certain way. I can just give you the information to work with, and then you’ll have to do whatever you want with it.”
“Indeed. Vegan and vegetarian pamphlets would make great napkins.”
She slapped my arm as I laughed. Even she couldn’t shake the guilty grin on her face.
“Come on. Let’s go to our next stop, shall we?”
“Are you goin
g to tell me where it is?”
“What’s the fun in that?”
Lilly’s eyes narrowed at me.
“I swear, you’re trying to make this like one of my novels. But you know what? It’s about time I lived out a story like that. Let’s go.”
“Just one warning. You’re not going to be able to ride the bike with me. We have to take an actual bus over.”
“What?” she said, pretending to be in a great deal of pain from hearing the news.
“And we’re going to have to go to New Jersey.”
“What?” she said, pretending to double over as if I had just shot her. “The horror, Jack, the horror! Don’t make me go to New Jersey! Anywhere but New Jersey!”
“I know, I know. But it’ll provide some pretty views of the other side. Quite literally.”
I knew she was just playing, though. She hopped up almost as quickly as she had fallen over, and once again, she took my hand as we walked through the streets of the Big Apple. I definitely wasn’t overly thrilled about leaving my motorcycle behind, but in a place like New York City, you could never really keep a vehicle in perfectly pristine condition. If it got too beat up, I could always take care of it when I returned home.
We walked through many of the midtown attractions, all the way down to 34th Street, where we waited for what looked like one of those small club vans, painted all white, to seat us. When we got in the van, Lilly snuggled up close to me, and I put my arm around her. The timing would have been perfect for a kiss—really, the timing for a kiss would have been great pretty much from the moment that she walked downstairs from her apartment—but I decided to hold off just a little longer.
After all, the night had a way of creating the most romance of all.
And sure enough, after about a twenty-minute van ride, we found ourselves in a seemingly suburban part of New Jersey, with only a high hill to climb to our destination.
“I can safely say that I have never written about a place like this in any of my novels,” Lilly cracked. “I’ve written about hell, the underworld, lairs, alternate dimensions, and a whole lot more, but New Jersey? You might as well have me writing about a completely different universe.”
